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Abandoned Love: So HOW is Scarlet Witch a Good Guy Again?

Every installment of Abandoned Love we will be examining comic book stories, plots and ideas that were abandoned by a later writer while still acknowledging that the abandoned story DID still happen. Click here for an archive of all the previous editions of Abandoned Love. Feel free to e-mail me at bcronin@comicbookresources.com if you have any suggestions for future editions of this feature.

This time around, we look at how Scarlet Witch was redeemed from her villainous actions from Avengers Disassembled...

In Avengers #503, Brian Michael Bendis explained how the Scarlet Witch went nuts. First off, she discovered that she had had two kids (her memory was wiped of this knowledge after it was revealed that her kids were actually just creations of her powers - she eventually DID recall this knowledge but Bendis retconned it so that she never did remember her kids. The bizarre tale of her two kids was told in an Abandoned an' Forsaked a while back)...

She went to Agatha Harkness for help (who Bendis also retconned as being dead)...

And this ended up with her snapping and taking on the Avengers with her super reality-altering powers, killing a number of Avengers in the process...

At the end of the conflict (which made up Avengers Disassembled), Magneto took her to Genosha to watch over her. The Avengers and the X-Men debated what to do with her. Some argued that she should be killed. Her brother Quicksilver decided to get her to use her reality-altering powers to make a new world where mutants were in charge. This was the crossover event known as the House of M. When she realized what she had done, Wanda's solution was to eliminate mutants period, which she did in House of M #7...

She popped up a few places after House of M, seemingly powerless and without any memory of her past, living in Eastern Europe.

In Avengers: The Children's Crusade, Wanda's kids (the souls that Wanda used to create her kids ended up in other kids after they were seemingly destroyed. These two kids ended up as members of the Young Avengers) tracked her down, although she was still without memory and about to marry Doctor Doom, as seen here in the third issue of the series by Allan Heinberg and Jimmy Cheung...

After much to do, her memories and powers returned to her in the sixth issue of the series...

The following issue we get the scoop on how she went nuts. The first part of Avengers #503 is still followed, the only difference is that now we learn where she went afterwards to bring her sons back...

So there you go, Wanda was possessed and therefore it was not really her fault. That was enough for the Avengers to eventually forgive her. That likely will eventually be enough for Cyclops to be forgiven someday, as well (for killing Professor X while possessed by the Phoenix).

However, they never actually say that Wanda lost all free will, which is why I'm sticking it here in Abandoned Love instead of with Abandoned an' Forsaked. I think changing it from "She did it" to "She did it because she couldn't handle all of the power she has absorbed" is one thing, but "She did it" to "She did it because she was possessed by a powerful being who specifically MADE her do it" is one step further and that gets into the world of forsaking the original story while this just gives more context to the original story.

If YOU have a suggestion for a future Abandoned Love, e-mail me at bcronin@comicbookresources.com